Or I could take that $10 and buy a thousand cheap knockoffs at wholesale prices straight from China and throw them out as they die.

To be fair, the difference between XP and Vista/7 wasn't that drastic. Sure the colors changed but if anything, it was still XP underneath with an updated look (and some cool new tools). Windows 8 is where they went off on a tangent and put a little too much tablet UI in a desktop OS.

Why not just replace the man with an automatic feeding machine? Then there won't be anyone to touch the equipment. At that point you can just remove the dog from the equation as well.

Distribution via an artist's website is kind of a pain. You have to go to each of your favorite artist's site and hit download a couple of times for whatever they are offering. Distribution via torrents is much easier. Throw your band's promo torrent up on any of the popular torrent indexing sites (The Pirate Bay, Isohunt, RuTorrents, etc) and now those files are centrally available under a single website. To take it one step further, work with any of the major music streaming sites (Spotify, Pandora, even Youtube) to show links to the promo torrent files (magnet URI would work even better, no files to host). Now when ever someone streams their favorite artist, they can get the promo torrent and then get recommendations for other artists they might like and download their promo torrents too.

BitTorrent as a distribution method can be used legitimately, it just requires giving users a little taste before you start asking for money.

Very cool but I would imagine this is much easier to use in games like Battlefield, ARMA, and Day Z where you aren't going to be doing too much close quarters fighting (TF2, Counter Strike, etc.). I can move my mouse faster than I can turn my head. Not to mention, the large maps on those games will definitely give you a nice workout.